Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Dissector for decoding WiMax MAC protocol

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 17:39:51 -0700

On Aug 4, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Liu Chunfang-CCL083 wrote:

Does anyone know if there is the planning to have a dissector to decode WiMax MAC protocol?

There's no Official Plan for dissectors - if somebody writes a dissector and contributes it, and it's good enough, it'll become part of Wireshark.

Bottom-layer protocols such as Ethernet are a special case, however - there'd need to be a way to identify those protocols based on "metadata" in the capture file, such as, for example, a capture type indication in the file header.

I assume the WiMax MAC protocol is such a protocol. If so, then, in order to handle it in Wireshark, we'd have to add code in the Wiretap library to recognize it in some capture file format that supports it - and if the format you want for it is the native libpcap format, you'd have to send mail to tcpdump-workers@xxxxxxxxxxx to request a link- layer type value for WiMax.